n!" replied Jacques Collin fervently,
seeing some other prisoners about him. And he joined the warder at the
gate.

"He got in to save Madeleine," said Fil-de-Soie. "We guessed rightly.
What a boss he is!"

"But how can he? Jack Ketch's men are waiting. He will not even see the
kid," objected le Biffon.

"The devil is on his side!" cried la Pouraille. "He claim our blunt!
Never! He is too fond of his old chums! We are too useful to him! They
wanted to make us blow the gaff, but we are not such flats! If he saves
his Madeleine, I will tell him all my secrets."

The effect of this speech was to increase the devotion of the three
convicts to their boss; for at this moment he was all their hope.

Jacques Collin, in spite of Madeleine's peril, did not forget to play
his part. Though he knew the Conciergerie as well as he knew the hulks
in the three ports, he blundered so naturally that the warder had to
tell him, "This way, that way," till they reached the office. There,
at a glance, Jacques Collin recognized a tall, stout man leaning on the
stove, with a long, red face not without distinction: it was Sanson.

"Monsieur is the chaplain?" said he, going towards him with simple
cordiality.

The mistake was so shocking that it froze the bystanders.

"No, monsieur," said Sanson; "I have other functions."

Sanson, the father of the last executioner of that name--for he has
recently been dismissed--was the son of the man who beheaded Louis XVI.
After four centuries of hereditary office, this descendant of so many
executioners had tried to repudiate the traditional burden. The Sansons
were for two hundred years executioners at Rouen before being promoted
to the first rank in the kingdom, and had carried out the decrees of
justice from father to son since the thirteenth century. Few families
can boast of an office or of nobility handed down in a direct line
during six centuries.

This young man had been captain in a cavalry regiment, and was looking
forward to a brilliant military career, when his father insisted on his
help in decapitating the king. Then he made his son his deputy when,
in 1793, two guillotines were in constant work--one at the Barriere du
Trone, and the other in the Place de Greve. This terrible functionary,
now a man of about sixty, was remarkable for his dignified air, his
gentle and deliberate manners, and his entire contempt for Bibi-Lupin
and his acolytes who fed the machine. The only detail which